


hand in hand

by simplycarryon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Nonverbal Frisk, Spoilers, look i say additional warnings but this is a true lab tapes fic so you know what's coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 23:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5394536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/pseuds/simplycarryon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frisk doesn't know how to work a VHS tape. You wouldn't either, except--you used to know someone who liked them a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hand in hand

**Author's Note:**

> part of the Chara & Frisk have separate bodies au I guess? that's a thing
> 
> I emerge from my writing slump with sadfic about the lab tapes so. warnings for: child death, referenced suicide, suicidal ideation, general thoughts of the void, wanting to not exist. the usual? protect these children.

There aren’t enough words to describe how much you hate everything in the entire underground lab. Every time you think you’re done finding things to be angry about (angry not sad definitely not crying screaming terrified), something new rears its squishy head for you to want to fight on Frisk’s behalf. 

Frisk has been holding your right hand since the moment the two of you fell into the lab; it’s safer this way, the two of you decided together. No getting separated or lost when you’re hand-in-hand. It makes cramming popato chisps into your faces a little harder than you’d like, but you’ve managed it together this far in the dingy light and you think, from the number of keys you’ve collected, that you’re close to the end now.

You move in front of Frisk, stepping into the next room cautiously and checking your surroundings before you let them follow you in. No sense getting ambushed by another formless blobshape if you can avoid it, but—there’s nothing here, and you squeeze Frisk’s hand in a comforting gesture.

“Looks like it’s just a bunch of old stuff,” you tell them, eyeing the old TV, but the lock in the corner catches your eye first and you pry the yellow key off Frisk’s phone, giving their hand one more squeeze before you let go. “Maybe we can sit down for a minute and rest?”

The key fits perfectly into the slot, and there’s a gentle click that makes you feel a little better about yourself. You turn to give Frisk a thumbs-up, but they’re off to the side, shining their phone’s light on the dusty shelves.

“Find anything good?” you ask, joining them; you poke through the contents of their chosen shelf, swiping some of the dust away with your sleeve. It’s—tapes? You think they’re VHS tapes, anyway, alphabetized neatly with the names written on the cases, and you reach in and grab one only to find that they’re also _sticky_ and ew ew ew _ew._

Frisk points at the case in your hand. _What is it?_

“Uh,” you reply, wiping your hand off on your pants; you gingerly return the tape back to its spot in the row. “It’s... a tape, I think? It’s kind of like a DVD in a big clunky box. My, uh—my friend used to be super into recording stuff on things like these. He’d wander around with his dumb camera all the time, and…”

You trail off. Frisk leans on you, gently, looking apologetic, and you pet their hair in the direction they like it petted and you try not to think about Asriel.

Better to keep moving, you decide. You check the TV, then, and find a box of uncased tapes laid out near it. They seem to be in a specific order, and you’re about to pick one up when Frisk selects the first one and immediately gets hung up on the tape itself. They try to _open_ it, first, like the entire box is the case to something else, and—well, in their defense you did say it was like a DVD. You still have to try pretty hard not to laugh.

“No, not like that. You put the whole tape in here,” you explain, locating the tape player and pushing the flap open with a finger. “It’s not actually a DVD, it’s just… like one? Except it can’t skip things, and it takes forever to rewind them. It’s basically a giant pain in the butt.”

Frisk nods agreeably, and immediately tries to put the tape in upside-down.

“Like this,” you correct them, flipping the tape over and popping it in. “You might want to cover your eyes, I dunno how bright this is going to be,” you warn, as an afterthought, and Frisk nods dutifully and puts their bandaged hands over their eyes as you turn on the TV and press play.

You think, at first, that the player’s broken somehow; there’s definitely sound, but there’s no video. You don’t know how to fix a broken VHS player, though, so you just punch it once and then turn up the sound a little bit. Toriel’s voice comes through, laughing, and then Asgore’s, and—oh.

Oh.

Frisk tugs on your sleeve, insistent, until you tear your eyes from the black screen and look at them.

 _Mom,_ they sign delightedly, and then _also Dad!_

You nod, and you pet their hair again, the busy motion keeping your brain from completely melting down. This is fine. You’re fine. “Yeah, that’s them. I guess this is, um. From a really long time ago. Back when they were—” 

_Together,_ you want to say. _In love._

_Happy._

“—well, a long time ago anyway. They’ve, uh. They’ve always been pretty big on puns. Toriel more than Asgore, she would—she would always—god, all of the pie jokes—“

The tape slides back out, and you take it and stare at it for a minute. You aren’t sure you want to watch these, any more, because—you think you might cry, if it’s all just old footage of your adoptive monster family being happy together. 

That happiness is gone now, and that’s your fault, your fault, your fault—

Frisk bumps their head on your shoulder, once. It’s enough to startle you back to the present, back to the dark lab and the tape in your hands, away from the old summer gold of the Dreemurr family. Your family, once, and then—then you broke it. And that’s all in the past, but maybe you owe it to them to remember them happier than you left them, happier than before you took everything away from them. 

You hand Frisk the tape and ask, _put in the next one?_

They nod, eager to show off their new VHS-tape-wrangling skills, and they pick out the tape labeled #2 and painstakingly push it into the player, jerking their hand back at the last moment like they’re afraid the flap will eat their fingers. When you give them a thumbs-up, they push play, and then cover their eyes again—and peek through their fingers, which defeats the purpose, but the screen’s still dark so you guess it’s not an issue either way.

_“Okay, Chara, are you ready?”_

You can feel the blood drain from your face; your hands go cold, your heart sinks in your chest, but you’re frozen in the moment. That voice, the voice you’ve always loved.

It’s been—

—so long.

He laughs, teasing you in the dark world behind the screen, suspended in a happy moment from so long ago, and you reach out a hand like you could press yourself through the screen—like you could close your eyes and open them and find yourself back then, back in the field of golden flowers. With him.

The tape clicks, ends. Frisk pulls it out and looks at you, worry wide in their dark eyes; you let out the breath you think you’ve been holding this whole time. You are here, in the lab, with them. There is a part of you, tired and worn and guilty, that wishes you were there in the screen, nothing more than a fading glimpse of a memory captured on a tape, but—here you are, for better or for worse.

“He always had that damn camera with him,” you tell Frisk, when they pat your arm in a concerned manner. You’re not crying, you’re _not,_ but you have to take a deep shuddery breath and let it out before you can say anything else. “He only had a few tapes, but… he would record over them all the time. Just us, messing around, or dressing up and pretending to be cool characters we’d drawn.”

Why he kept _this_ recording, you’re not sure.

Dumb thing doesn’t even have proper video.

You pop the next one in, hoping for—you don’t know what you’re hoping for, really, aside from not-this. Maybe something with the Absolute God of Hyperdeath and that one day he let you draw stripes on his face to match his drawing. Maybe that one day you made mud pies together and tracked mud all over the castle. Maybe—

_“When we tried to make butterscotch pie for Dad, right?”_

Your heart stops in your chest.

Why did he save this? Why this, over anything else he could have kept?

You don’t understand.

_“Turn off the camera? Okay.”_

Frisk pulls you back, a tiny warm hand in your cold fingers. You feel like you could blow away, like an errant breath could scatter you to the wind, but—Frisk holds you in place, anchors you to the moment.

 _We can stop,_ they sign, looking at you like they’re afraid you might come apart, like you’ll disappear if they blink too hard. 

You shake your head. There is a part of you, substantial now, that would like very much to stop—to disappear—to hide the box even further underground than it already is. You could destroy a box of VHS tapes, easy. You have a knife, and determination. Cut the film. Break the tether between then and now.

But the rest of you can’t. Won’t.

This is all that’s left of him, of back then.

You grab the last two tapes.

_“I’d never doubt you, Chara…”_

_“We’ll be strong. We’ll free everyone.”_

You’re crying, now, your breath coming in shaky hitches as Frisk rubs their thumb in circles against your palm, a tiny spark of comfort. This is it, this is the beginning of the end, this is just a breath away from when you stopped and then he did. 

You were children, dreaming of something better, of sunlight and golden flowers and safety. Of vengeance, too—bright-sharp justice hot in his-your-our hands—but always, always of you and him, of your hand in his, of your soul weighted with his strength and your humanity enveloped in his gentle being. 

Soft. Warm. Safe.

Together. 

The last tape is too many voices that aren’t his, Toriel and Asgore begging you to stay determined, to return from the brink of death. You don’t remember much of this; echoes of the moment persist at the edge of your memory, ragged and small, but they fade into nothing the second that you grasp at them.

And then—Asriel. Oh, Asriel.

He’s crying. He was always crying, at the end; he didn’t like seeing you broken, bleeding, in pain. You don’t understand why he would record this—why he would in any good conscience capture a moment where you were dying just beyond the lens cap he always forgot to remove—

_“I said I’d never doubt you.”_

You wonder, from far away, if he knew you’d hear these someday. But no, no, that’s ridiculous. 

_“We’ll do it together, right?”_

You laugh.

It starts tiny, at first. A giggle. Then louder, and louder, and you laugh until your throat hurts and you draw your hands in angry grieving fists around thick handfuls of your hair and you’re not sure if you’re laughing or screaming or crying—

 _Chara,_ Frisk signs, and they reach a hesitant halfway for your hands, like they want to stop you—like they even could. You’re stronger than they are, you don’t have to listen to them, but a tiny dizzying fragment of you latches onto the shape of their fingers around your name-sign, amid your spiral into the blank numb expanse of empty laughter. _Please._

“I just wanted to be dead!” you laugh-cry-scream, grabbing for their hands; they wince, and you—you didn’t mean to hurt them, but you did anyway because that’s all you know how to do, and you let them go and you press the heel of your hand to your forehead and laugh until the sound comes out as a ragged searing cough. “I wanted to do something good! And not be afraid any more! And I would have been part of Asriel, and we would have been strong together, and—and nobody would ever have been able to hurt us again—but I fucked it up, I got him killed, I—h-he trusted me and I let him die—“

Frisk presses their hands to your face, their thumbs against your cheekbones; their hands burn a gentle warmth against your skin. You would pull back, jerk away, slap their hands—but exhaustion sinks into you, and your throat burns and your shoulders slump and then you’re on the floor, on your hands and knees as Frisk wraps their arms around you.

They’re too kind, too soft, too good. You don’t deserve them. You don’t deserve anything.

“I’m so tired, Frisk,” you breathe. “I’m so tired.”

You can feel them nod quietly beside you. 

“I just wanted to stop,” you continue. You don’t move; this is awkward for both of you, with your face mashed indelicately into Frisk’s shoulder, but they don’t seem to mind. “Asriel didn’t get it. But he trusted me. Never doubted me. Now he’s dead. And I’m not. And that’s not fair, Frisk. I’m just—I’m just. So tired. Of everything.”

You sit there, for a long while, without moving. Frisk’s hands trace soothing circles along your back, smoothing out the hitches in your breath as you sniffle into their shoulder, and—you’re not okay. You won’t ever be okay. Not in a world without Asriel.

But you have Frisk. They’re not a replacement for him—you wouldn’t want them to be, they’d make a horrible Asriel, they’re too nice-on-purpose—but they’re something. They’re Frisk. And Frisk is okay. They’re soft and gentle, and they understand you. They know what it’s like to want to stop. 

They climbed the mountain, after all. Same as you did.

You pull back a little, and Frisk lets you go quickly, like they’ve been afraid this whole time that they’re infringing on your personal space. And they are, but… just this once you don’t mind. 

_Still you?_ Frisk signs, their smile tiny and hopeful.

“Still me.” You wipe your face on your sleeve, leaving gross dark smudges against the green, but—whatever. It’s seen worse. “I... I’m sorry about that. Dumb tapes caught me off guard. I didn’t mean to be all blah blah bloo I have a tragic backstory—“

_I’m glad you’re alive._

You’re torn between laughing and crying, and the sound bubbles up as a bit of both and you choke on it. So much for playing things off as cool, you grimace, coughing into your elbow.

“Thanks,” you reply, when you can talk without wheezing. “I’m—not? But I know what you mean. And—I’m glad I met you. I’m glad you’re here.”

Frisk’s smile could light up a room, you think. 

You put the tapes back where they belong, giving each one a tiny pat as you fit them back into place. If this is all you have left of Asriel—this and the locket that hangs heavy around your neck—then you’re determined to make the most of it.

You leave the room hand-in-hand. You don’t know what’s coming, you don’t know what’s ahead—but you and Frisk, you’ll do this together.


End file.
